The Boston Pub That Was Only Paid $1 To Become TV's Most Iconic Hangout

Plenty of real places served as the location for classic sitcoms, at least for the exterior shots. In New York City, for instance, you can visit the apartment building from "Friends," or the diner that stood in as Monk's on "Seinfeld." And if you happen to be in Boston, you can stop by the place where everybody knows your name, "Cheers" — although it didn't always go by that name. In fact, the agreement for the pub to be used for the show was only for $1.

Cheers (the bar, not the sitcom) started life as the Bull & Finch, an English-style pub opened in 1969 by one Thomas A. Kershaw. (The name came from Boston architect Charles Bulfinch, commonly considered the first prominent American-born architect.) It was a popular local haunt, but it didn't seem destined for immortality until a pair of writers from "Taxi" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," Glen and Les Charles, struck out on their own to make a sitcom. They wanted to create a show about a bar in Boston, since pubs on the East Coast had a sense of camaraderie and there weren't many shows set in Boston. After a quick peek in the phone book, they contacted the Bull & Finch and asked if they could use it for establishing shots. Kershaw agreed for just $1, although he's since made a great deal more money than that.

"Cheers," of course, became a beloved sitcom classic. It established "Sam and Diane" as a byword for a will-they-won't-they relationship; it gave us an equally beloved spinoff with "Frasier;" and it launched the career of a young Woody Harrelson. This newfound fame was something of a mixed blessing for the Bull & Finch; it received throngs of visitors wanting to see the real-life "Cheers," but it ended up compromising its status as an actual neighborhood watering hole. Eventually, Thomas A. Kershaw embraced the bar's celebrity, renaming it "Cheers Beacon Hill" (after its surrounding neighborhood) and selling "Cheers"-themed merchandise in the gift shop.

Today, the bar's theming is as strong as ever. You can order from "Sam's Starters," including chicken wings and potato "pub" skins; or sink into an entree like Rebecca's Fish and Chips (made from cod, a classic choice for fish and chips) or Carla's Meatballs and Linguini. You can even order the Giant Norm Burger — which consists of two patties topped with muenster cheese, mushrooms, and onion rings in addition to the standard lettuce and tomato — and finish it in one sitting to end up in the Norm Burger Hall of Fame. (Compared to the two-pound burger challenge at the Rattlesnake Saloon, it seems pretty low-stakes, but we guess not everything has to be the most intense food challenge in America.) The bar receives hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, which is obviously great for the business — although that's a whole lot of names to remember.